Why This Mom Is Giving Frozen the Cold Shoulder

"Disney has consciously made a movie that celebrates girl/woman power, and yet, precisely at the moment when the lead character—after a young lifetime of fighting and fearing her power—chooses to embrace it, she turns into a sexpot in front of our eyes."

I love Frozen. I loved the movie when I saw it with my 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. I loved that it was a story about sisterly love and girls-turned-women harnessing their power, and not just a heterosexual fairy tale where romance is the raison d'etre. As the mother of young children who have already been through the Disney princess phase, I applaud Disney for making an effort to bring that franchise into this millennium with more evolved female characters. At my house, we play and replay the songs and videos, in particular "Let It Go." All of us have memorized the words and belt them out as if Idina Menzel herself had come for a playdate. I genuinely feel the optimistic potential of transformation when I feel that big Broadway voice cascade over me, and hear my daughter struggle to hit the high notes.

And yet, something about the performance of this song in the movie sticks in my craw—and it happens at about 3:03 minutes into "Let it Go."

During Elsa's physical transformation, I looked over at my partner in the theater and audibly gasped. The Disney magic sprinkles over Elsa, who has already unclipped and abandoned her cape. She lets down her bun braid, shaking out her blonde hair as if in precoital pounce. Her regal coronation outfit (long gown with long black sleeves—stunning and stately) morphs into a snowflake of a dress: a Tiffany blue, tight-fitting gown with a long slit in the skirt, dramatically highlighting what appears to be her 18-inch waist sandwiched between perfect perky breasts and womanly hips. She sashays toward the camera in little tiny high-heeled shoes, teetering on instability. The closing shot, a closeup of her face, reveals metallic purple eyeshadow, dramatically groomed brows, and a look of wicked satisfaction. Elsa has transitioned seamlessly from a girl literally hiding her power under gloves, to a bare-shouldered vixen proudly broadcasting all of her nubile assets.

Disney has consciously made a movie that celebrates girl/woman power, and yet, precisely at the moment when the lead character—after a young lifetime of fighting and fearing her power—chooses to embrace it, she turns into a sexpot in front of our eyes. It's no accident that the movie conflates the way Elsa embraces her magical powers with her transformation into a hyperfeminized object. I'm all for sexual power, but does that need to be telegraphed with a skintight, slit dress that highlights unrealistic waist sizes, and tits and hips that seem to exist primarily on a Victoria's Secret runway or after a trip to the cosmetic surgeon? In a movie whose audience sweet spot is the four-to-eight-year-old set? My partner actually laughed out loud at this point in the movie, uncomfortable with how sexualized Elsa had just become, and our 6-year-old daughter became angry, and retorted in the theater, "Mama, shhh!! She's BEAUTIFUL."

And she was beautiful. But she had always been beautiful, even before she got poured into that glittery dress and stripper heels.

From my highly unscientific survey of the playground, I can report that most of the girls I have asked, when they play Frozen, fight over who gets to be Elsa. I wondered why, since I was more drawn to Anna, the affable, funny, curious, and warm sister. But Elsa's the queen! The one with all the power! And she's stunningly blonde, and can create ice castles just by exhaling. Of course they want to be Elsa.

It is admirable that the sisterly bond is the primary love narrative—but that raises other problematic issues about women and power. "Sisterhood is powerful in this movie," Entertainment Weekly writer Jessica Shaw notes, "with the giant asterisk that one sister is super sexy but ultimately alone with her magical powers, and the other is cute and sweet but powerless and paired with a man." There isn't anything wrong with Elsa being alone, of course, and I realize that at this moment, she's probably all of 20 years old—but it's troubling that the powerful sister is the one whom everyone fears is a witch, while the fun, gregarious one, the one who is self-sacrificing but ultimately not threatening, is the sister who has two men pursue her in the movie. These are some tired stereotypes that are being impounded into my kids' brains every time they hear this song, even if they aren't yet aware of it.

It's also troubling that the appeal of this movie, and "Let It Go" in particular, extends to tweens. Girls on the cusp of puberty are also obsessing over the song, identifying with the transformational lyrics about pride of identity. It's facilitated by Disney ambassador Demi Lovato, who has talked openly about her struggles with her body and eating disorder, and who also has recorded the song. But every time girls see the animated video, they're reminded of that 18-inch waist and those shapely legs. (I'm already dreading the Elsa-post-transformation Halloween costumes that will emerge.)

When I heard the now-Oscar-nominated movie is moving to Broadway as a musical (and probably will tour America on ice after it kills it on Broadway), I grasped the cultural force this story holds. I'm sure my daughter will beg me to take her to the show, as she begs me daily to see the movie again. I've been putting off another viewing, and I don't plan to own it on Blu-Ray. But I do await the day she's old enough to understand and discuss this intelligently with me—and to figure out for herself what her own superpowers are, and how to use them.